The charts below show that the longer you invest, the higher the chance that you will achieve positive returns and lower the chance that you will lose money. The charts illustrate what would have happened during the period from 28 January 1984 to 30 January 2009 if you had invested for any ten-year, five-year, or one-year period. There were a total of 181 possible ten-year periods over this time and you would have made money if you had invested over almost all of them. In contrast, out of the 289 possible one-year periods, you would have lost money 25% of the time.